SPIE Remote Sensing, Security and Defence 2017

Remote sensing for agricultural and industrial activities as well as quantum technologies for secure communications and information processing will be a major focus at the collocated SPIE Remote Sensing and SPIE Security + Defence this year.

The two events will be held in Warsaw, 11-14 September. Some 950 engineers, scientists, policy makers, and program managers are expected to take part in the 22 conferences, a poster session, a two-day exhibition, and an all-day industry session on commercial opportunities for photonics in Poland.

A joint plenary session Monday 11 September will have three speakers, including Colonel Krzysztof Kopczynski, a head of research at the Institute of Optoelectronics at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw.

Kopczynski has led a number of national and international projects using optoelectronic methods and lidar systems for high-energy laser weapons and advanced helmet protection and for the identification of biological contaminants. He will discuss optoelectronics developments in Poland for defense and security.

Also on the plenary stage will be Molly Brown, associate research professor at the University of Maryland (USA) and Chief Science Officer of 6th Grain Global, a private company in Singapore. A former NASA scientist, Brown was the lead author of a 2015 climate assessment report published by the US Department of Agriculture entitled “Climate Change, Global Food Security, and the US Food System.”

Her talk will describe how remote-sensing data and weather information can be combined with household survey and consumption information to better understand the impact of environmental and climate change on food security outcomes.

The third speaker is SPIE Fellow Antoni Rogalski, also of the Military University of Technology, who will discuss infrared detectors. During the course of his scientific career, Rogalski has made pioneering contributions in the theory, design, and technology of many types of IR detectors.

The industry session on Wednesday 13 September will include an overview of funding in Europe, including an update on the MIRPHAB pilot line project (Mid InfraRed PHotonics devices fABrication for chemical sensing and spectroscopic applications). Talks will also provide insight into the market for mid-IR sensing and imaging technologies, recent advances in night-vision systems, trends in commercial applications of gallium nitride lasers, and other “dual use” technologies.

Speakers at the industry session will include Johannes Koeth, CEO of nanoplus; Sergio Nicoletti of Leti - CEA; Krzysztof Chrzanowski, director of INFRAMET; Thierry Robin of TEMATYS; Roland Schwarz, senior research assistant at RIEGL; Stephen Najda, vice president of business development at TopGaN Lasers; and Adam Piotrowski and Jozef Piotrowski of VIGO Systems.

The 24th SPIE Remote Sensing symposium will have more than 600 presentations on the latest systems, technologies, and applications for earth observation. Topics include hyperspectral sensing, next-generation satellites, image and signal processing, and a host of technologies for remote sensing of the oceans, ecosystems, urban environments, and agricultural regions.

Nearly 100 oral and poster presentations are scheduled for a conference on remote sensing for agriculture, ecosystems, and hydrology, with many applications in forecasting weather and increasing agricultural yields. Applications for remote sensing also include water quality measurements, energy conservation, and emergency responses to floods, fires, droughts, and other disasters.

More than 40 countries will be represented at both events.

The chair for SPIE Remote Sensing is Klaus Schäfer of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (Germany). Cochairs are SPIE member Christopher M. U. Neale of the Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska Lincoln (USA) and Stanislaw Lewinski of the Space Research Centre, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland).

Eleven conferences at SPIE Security + Defence will cover the latest developments in optical materials, data and signal analysis, quantum information science, optronics, hyperspectral sensing, and technologies for millimeter wave and terahertz sensors.

Several joint sessions are planned, including one on components and technologies for quantum devices and quantum metrology, sensing, and imaging.

Chairs for SPIE Security + Defence are SPIE Senior member Ric Schleijpen of TNO Defence, Security and Safety (Netherlands); SPIE member Karin Stein from Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB (Germany), and Jan K. Jabczyński of the Institute of Optoelectronics at the Military University of Technology (Poland).

NOTE: This article has been updated to reflect changes in the symposia program made after the print edition of SPIE Professional was published.

Learn more about SPIE Remote Sensing and SPIE Security + Defence.

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